


Lost and Found

by margdean56



Series: Tower Mountain/New Hope stories [4]
Category: Elfquest
Genre: F/M, Hidden Valley I, Recognition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-10
Updated: 2012-09-10
Packaged: 2017-11-13 22:33:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/508439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/margdean56/pseuds/margdean56
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meanwhile, in the Tower's lost sister colony, a momentous encounter takes place...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost and Found

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published in _Tales of the Tower #9_

TWR 608

Periel was lost. A dweller in the Hidden Valley’s hometree grove and a lover of the woods and meadows, she came to the high city only rarely. But today her mother, up to her ear-tips in frenzied preparations for the morrow’s Festival of Flowers, had asked Periel to make the trip to the city’s sheltered gardens to get trailing-star for the dancers’ wreaths. The young herbalist was willing enough to be of help, but had many preparations of her own to make. So she was in a hurry and either misunderstood Maryah’s directions or missed a turn somewhere. The city was a maze anyway, with its many stairs and terraces and winding paths. She supposed she had made matters worse by trying to find her own way rather than asking for help immediately. Now she stood in the middle of a deserted courtyard whose gray stone flags were spotted with puddles from last night’s rain, a slight figure in green and brown tunic and breeches, her long brown hair tied in a tail at the nape of her neck. She had an ivy-laced villa in front of her, a broad veinstone stair on each side, the path she had come in by behind her, and absolutely no idea of which way she should turn next. She stood gazing around in utter bewilderment, and noted with despair the length of the shadows of the tall urns at the foot of the left-hand stair. Maryah would be frantic…

Footsteps ascended the right-hand stair and a kindly voice asked, “Are you lost?” Periel turned and saw a tall elf whose dark hair hung past his waist in a single braid. He wore a long crimson robe richly embroidered at sleeves and hem—obviously a city dweller. She sighed with relief.

“Yes,” she said, smiling apologetically. “I’m from the hometree grove. I came to get trailing-star for the festival garlands.” She touched the empty basket slung over her elbow. “Could you tell me how to get to the Hanging Gardens?”

“Certainly,” the robed elf answered, smiling back. “Just go down these stairs,” he pointed back the way he had come, “turn left on the white stone path, follow it until you come to another stair on the left, and go up. The gardens will be at the top of the stair. It’s not far.”

“Thank you, um—”

“Irralev,” he supplied.

Periel’s brown eyes went wide as she looked on the chief healer of the high city, close companion to Lord Meiron himself. “Th-thank you, Healer,” she stammered.

Irralev’s green eyes twinkled. “I don’t bite, child.” He stepped closer, careful to steer his trailing robe around an intervening puddle. “And what might your name be?” he asked in a friendly tone.

“I’m Periel,” she answered, “daughter of Maryah and Vannhael.”

His face lighted. “Ah, Maryah! I remember your mother very well indeed. We were good friends before the Sundering, but I no longer see her as often as I should like. Is she well?”

“Very well, Healer, but very busy,” Periel replied with a twinkle of her own. The healer’s friendly manner and the fact that he knew her mother made her feel more at ease. “That’s why I’m in the city today in her stead. I should hurry,” she added apologetically. “I’m late already and I’m sure she’s begun to wonder what’s become of me.”

Irralev laughed. “No doubt. Well, run along, then, and give her my greeting when you return.”

“I will, Healer. Thank you!” Periel turned and ran lightly across the courtyard toward the descending stairs, repeating Irralev’s directions under her breath.

A part of her mind registered vaguely that another tall figure, blond and blue-robed, was ascending the stairway as she hurried down it, but she did not pause to identify who it was. Concentrating on her directions, she did not watch where she was going, either. One soft-booted foot landed in a puddle and found no purchase on the wet marble. Periel pitched forward. Her basket went flying down the stairs. She would have followed it if a strong hand had not caught her arm, breaking her fall.

“Steady there—” a deep, resonant voice began, then stopped abruptly. The grip on her arm tightened, the grasp that felt as if it were burning through the light cloth of her tunic. Periel’s head snapped up; her eyes met a pair of ice-blue ones in a narrow, aquiline face…

…and though hitherto she had seen him only from afar on high festival days, in that instant she _knew_ him through every atom of her being…

Meiron, Lord of the Hidden Valley.

In that same instant she felt him become aware of her, his gaze seeming to pierce through to her very soul. “Periel,” he breathed, his voice trembling with shock.

The young herbalist’s next coherent thought was, _This can’t be happening._ No Recognitions had occurred among the elves of the Hidden Valley for eights-of-eights. No children played in the streets of the high city or the paths of the hometree grove. Most thought, sadly, that there would be no more. And Meiron had already been Recognized once before. Though the story belonged to the distant past, before the discovery of the Valley and long before her own birth, Periel was familiar with the tale of the Sundering: how the elves who later settled the Hidden Valley were separated from friends and kin by a raft and a flooding river. Meiron’s lifemate had drowned that day in a desperate attempt to reach him; their son was left behind on the shore with Meiron’s brother Tyaar and many of their people. Long searching, once the raft finally grounded, failed to locate the lost elves.

By the time the Hidden Valley was discovered, Meiron had apparently accepted his loss. Certainly he put the seal on it when he made the decision to close the only pass into the Valley. Under his direction his followers built a new life for themselves. None proved more diligent in this than their rockshaper lord. There was scarcely a tower or wall in the city that did not bear the mark of his formidable Talent and artistry. Down the turns he had ruled them with a sure but gentle hand, earning his people’s love as well as their respect. Yet in all that time the Lord of the Hidden Valley had never taken another mate.

But now…

_Impossible! Impossible!_ Periel’s mind clamored. How could she presume to step into a place so long vacant? Yet the bond would not be denied. It held them both, opening soul to soul, so that she saw through his eyes and felt with his heart.

Shock came first, the stunning rush of realization that went hand in hand with the overwhelming upsurge of _need_ —the need that caused his grip on her arm to tighten and his breath and heartbeat to quicken in unison with hers. He knew this feeling, had experienced it once before, but in any case Recognition was unmistakable. Astonishment followed, for he no more than she had believed that Recognition could occur twice in his lifetime—the endless lifetime of a firstborn child of the High Ones. That it could, that it had, was a miracle he responded to with wonder and the hesitant beginnings of joy. Yet at the same time he felt fear, and braced himself as if for a killing stroke.

Meiron had sealed away the memory of his beloved Natalya along with the pain of her loss, locked them in a casket of stone in the depths of his heart. Now those depths were shaken by a force nothing could withstand. The receptacle of pain and memory cracked and broke, releasing…

…no more than the whiff of a fresh sea breeze, the faintest ghost of a sigh, the echo of laughter. The strongest wine, sweet or bitter, no matter how tightly sealed the jar that contains it, will lose its potency over time and evaporate into the air. This wine, sweetest memory and bitterest sorrow, was millennia old. Time had robbed it of all power to harm, stolen it away unsuspected bit by bit, and dissipated it to the winds. The stroke he feared came only as the lightest touch of what might have been a benediction. Then it was gone, its receptacle crumbled to dust. Freed at last of the weight of it, his heart opened anew to joy and the bringer of joy—Periel.

Her youth and sweetness filled him, the gentleness of her spirit and its pliant strength, her freshness that recalled the green of budding leaves. She was new life, the renewal of hope. He gazed into her warm brown eyes wherein her soul trembled. His hand came up to touch her soft brown hair with a kind of reverence. “Periel,” he whispered again. Overcome with awe, her knees buckled, but he caught her other arm before she could abase herself, intentionally or no. “Do not,” he murmured. “If one of us is to kneel, it should be I.”

She stared at him in shock and confusion. “But—” she stammered, still struggling with disbelief, “—but you’re the lord of the city!”

He responded with a terrible seriousness, lapsing into the archaic speech of his youth with its long outmoded familiar forms, used only between intimates and equals. “And thou, if thou wilt have it so, art my lady.”

_If thou wilt have it so…_ He offered her a choice, when the need that burned behind his eyes was as great as her own? He, who commanded the loyalty of everyone in the Hidden Valley? Yet before the will of the High Ones, the power of Recognition, they stood indeed as equals, bared to one another. She felt the strength of stones within him, the strength to support her decision whatever it might be. Over the millennia he had learned to bear with loneliness. He would do so again rather than take by force what should be freely given.

For a breath’s time she gazed into his face with its ice-blue eyes, the strong bones beneath ivory skin, the lines framing eyes and mouth that no healer’s touch could smooth away. All that he was—son of the High Ones, lord of his people, lifemate and father, spirit and body—she knew, as he knew her. Recognition placed her soul in his keeping, but her heart was hers to give.

For only a breath she paused before flinging herself into his arms. “Yes,” she choked out. “Oh, yes!”

They stood thus on the stairs for a time in close embrace, the tall, gold-crowned figure robed in blue and white and the small, slender one clad in the green and brown of the forest, while the westering sun shone down on them. Then an astonished voice broke into the timelessness that held them.

“Meiron?” It was Irralev, coming back to see what delayed the friend he had known to be only a little way behind him. He thought Meiron might have lingered to speak to a passerby, but the last thing he expected to find was his lord embracing a maiden—the maiden he himself had directed to the Hanging Gardens only a short while ago.

Meiron raised his head and looked up at his friend. There was that in his blue eyes that the healer could not fail to read, though he found it hard to believe. “Is it—Recognition?”

Meiron nodded. “It is more,” he added then, in his deep, resonant voice. “It is a rebirth of hope for our people.”

Irralev hurried down the stairs to his side. His green eyes searched Meiron’s face. “For our people, yes,” he said softly. “And for you, old friend?”

The healer read his answer in the tenderness with which his lord stroked Periel’s hair, the emotion shining in both their faces as she raised her head to look at Meiron. The weight that lifted from Irralev’s heart was little less than the one that burdened Meiron for so long. “Praise the High Ones!” he exclaimed, gladness lighting his face. “And may they bless you both.” He laid a hand on the arm of each, as if to confirm the miracle with his own senses.

Periel disentangled her gaze from Meiron’s long enough to look at Irralev. “Thank you, Healer.” Then, as if his face reminded her vaguely of something outside the world encompassed in the circle of her lord’s arms, she glanced about in a distracted way. Something she had forgotten?

**Periel!** The sending was distant but clear. Maryah was one of the strongest senders in the Valley. **Periel, where are you?**

The young herbalist’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh dear! Mother! I forgot—” She tried to gather her wits enough to reply, but Meiron’s sending, unmistakable in its strength and clarity, forestalled hers.

**The Lady Periel is with me, Maryah. We shall be occupied for the rest of the day, I believe.** He glanced at Periel with a gleam in his blue eyes. **And night. Possibly longer.**

**My lord!** was Maryah’s first reaction as she recognized Meiron’s sending. Then, as his words began to sink in, **The _Lady_ Periel?**

It did not take her long to divine the truth, however. Besides being a strong sender she was an extremely sensitive one; a part of her mind could detect the flavor of her daughter in Meiron’s projected thoughts. She hardly needed the confirmation of Periel’s sending, **We’ve Recognized, Mother.**

Maryah’s reaction to the news was similar to Irralev’s. Periel guessed the tale would be all over the hometree grove in less time than it took the daystar to travel its own width down the sky. It would probably not take much longer to spread throughout the city. But in the meantime, Maryah still had room in her mind for other matters. **Periel … the trailing-star?** she inquired delicately.

Irralev, who was also privy to the sendings, laughed aloud. “Ah, Maryah! Some things never change. Your mother, my lady, can always be trusted to keep a firm grasp on essential details no matter what the circumstances.”

“But she is quite right,” Meiron remonstrated mildly. Releasing Periel, he descended the stairs and bent to retrieve the basket that lay on its side at the bottom. He came back up the steps and extended the basket to Irralev. “Old friend, since the Lady Periel will be otherwise occupied, would you be so good as to find someone to gather trailing-star and carry it to Maryah in the hometree grove?”

“With pleasure, my lord.” Irralev thought he might undertake the errand himself and seize the opportunity to renew old acquaintance.

“No smallest detail of tomorrow’s festival must be neglected,” Meiron went on. “This year everything must be perfect. This year,” he smiled down at Periel, “we truly have cause for celebration. For in this season of rebirth, new life flowers within us as well.

“Come, my lady.” His arm went around her shoulders as hers encircled his waist. Together they ascended the stairs in the last light of the sun. Irralev watched them go, smiling, then turned down the stairs toward the Hanging Gardens. Tomorrow’s festivities would truly be the most joyous since the settling of the Valley. And two years hence, the healer thought, his smile broadening, even more so. His step quickened and he began to hum under his breath the music of the Long Dance.

**Author's Note:**

> Yep, this is the same Hidden Valley that Longshanks and Bugdance found in "Opening Ceremony," and Lord Meiron and Lady Periel are Piet's parents. It's all connected...


End file.
